The Rainbow Warrior was the flagship of the international environmental organisation, Greenpeace. It had been in port at Auckland for three days and was scheduled to lead a fleet of vessels to Muroroa Atoll in protest against the French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. It never made that voyage.
Just before midnight on 10 July, 1985, two explosions rocked the harbour, sinking the forty metre Rainbow Warrior. Underwater charges had been placed by French frogmen blowing two holes in the vessel’s hull. The ship sank almost immediately. All the crew managed to escape, apart from the photographer, Fernando Pereira, who drowned.
Twenty one years later, Monday the 10th of July, 2006, Rudolf Boelee's exhibition "Sink the Rainbow Warrior!" (21) opens at PaperGraphica. The work in the installation presents a series of portraits of the French agents involved, the victim and background information about the incident.
The Rainbow Warrior bombing was the first time an act of international state-sponsored terrorism had been committed in New Zealand. It marked the end of our sense of security through isolation and the beginning of an era in which we have been forced to acknowledge that world politics, whether they are expressed through terrorism or environmental threat, can impact directly upon us.
